It’s so interesting how varied our needs are! I’m struck reading the comments with how few gadgets we have:
- the basic cooking appliances — stove top, oven, plus a microwave that is used daily.
- Standard toaster - sits on counter, used frequently. No toaster oven.
- Zojirushi water dispenser — used daily for instant hot water for tea. Sits on counter.
- Coffee station — used daily! We recently bought a Nespresso Virtuo machine, which we wanted to use on our Airstream trips because our usual French press routine requires a lot of cleanup and water and can result in a fair bit of waste. We like the coffee and the pods are recyclable (I just dropped off a bag to Williams Sonoma the other day). Hubs want to get one of those pricey Miele machines, and I scoffed at first. But of everything in our kitchen, the one thing we absolutely do every day we are home is make coffee. So maybe it is worth a pricey built-in machine! I do like an option that eliminates the need for the grinder and the hot water kettle to be out on the kitchen counter all the time. We still have an old drip coffee maker for times when we have guests and want to be able to make a big pot of coffee, but I think we can get rid of that with the addition of the Nespresso (or whatever machine we add).
- Food processor, blender, hand mixer — all infrequently used. I guess our cooking and prep are much more based on knife cutting by hand and mixing in bowls by hand, LOL. These live in a cabinet.
- We have a meat grinder that we need to give away. It was a one-time use thing for beef from the ranch.
- Crockpot — used occasionally. Lives in a big cabinet.
- Juicer — I think I brought it home from my mom’s after she passed. I don’t recall ever using it.
A lot of things that sound essential for others don’t mean much to us (and vice versa, I’m sure!). It’s just the two of us, 90% of the time, and we are not super into cooking, although we’ve gotten better at it over the last two years. And even Thanksgiving dinners are not the production they were some years ago — this year my stepson and his wife are hosting for the second time, so we are off the hook! Boy, it’s a challenge doing Thanksgiving dinner for 12 people with two induction burners, an oven, and a microwave!
Ok, talk to me about rice cookers. What’s the big deal? I throw rice and water in a pot and set the timer. We mainly do rice with Blue Apron meals. Is a rice cooker really so much better? Can you use it for stuff other than rice?
